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Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest
Ladies of the Canyons is the true story of remarkable women who left the security and comforts of genteel Victorian society and journeyed to the American Southwest in search of a wider view of themselves and their world.Educated, restless, and inquisitive, Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright were plucky, intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century by the people and the landscape of the American Southwest. Part of an influential circle of women that included Louisa Wade Wetherill, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, and Willa Cather, these ladies imagined and created a new home territory, a new society, and a new identity for themselves and for the women who would follow them.Their adventures were shared with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Robert Henri, Edgar Hewett and Charles Lummis, Chief Tawakwaptiwa of the Hopi, and Hostiin Klah of the Navajo. Their journeys took them to Monument Valley and Rainbow Bridge, into Canyon de Chelly, and across the high mesas of the Hopi, down through the Grand Canyon, and over the red desert of the Four Corners, to the pueblos along the Rio Grande and the villages in the mountains between Santa Fe and Taos.Although their stories converge in the outback of the American Southwest, the saga of Ladies of the Canyons is also the tale of Boston’s Brahmins, the Greenwich Village avant-garde, the birth of American modern art, and Santa Fe’s art and literary colony.Ladies of the Canyons is the story of New Women stepping boldly into the New World of inconspicuous success, ambitious failure, and the personal challenges experienced by women and men during the emergence of the Modern Age.
376 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 17, 2015
191 people are currently reading
1452 people want to read
About the author
Lesley Poling-Kempes
12 books57 followersMy writing life is completely connected to my daily life on the high desert of Abiquiu and northern New Mexico. Like my "Bone Horses" protagonist, Charlotte, I was born and raised in New York, specifically in Westchester County. Unlike Charlotte, I loved the wild vast empty desert and wide blue sky of the Southwest on sight. I was always working my way back home to this exotic, magnificent place. After college I moved full time into the Indio-Hispanic world of Abiquiu. I began to write the real and imagined stories of my adopted community, first in non-fiction books and then in my first novel "Canyon of Remembering" and now "Bone Horses."
For several decades my primary work was as a writer/historian. For my first 3 books ("The Harvey Girls", "Valley of Shining Stone", and "Ghost Ranch") I interviewed and talked with literally hundreds of old-timers all over the Southwest. I heard remarkable tales of the early days in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. These are the foundation for all of my writing.
For several decades my primary work was as a writer/historian. For my first 3 books ("The Harvey Girls", "Valley of Shining Stone", and "Ghost Ranch") I interviewed and talked with literally hundreds of old-timers all over the Southwest. I heard remarkable tales of the early days in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. These are the foundation for all of my writing.
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July 2, 2019
Having just spent a lovely week in a beautifully appointed casita just off the plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I was delighted to find a copy of Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and their Adventures in the American Southwest by author Lesley Poling-Kempes, in its extensive library (a book that was even on my "to be read" list). This was a deeply researched book about some very interesting, talented and remarkable women that came to the desert southwest in the early twentieth century, falling in love with the land and the culture, and forever leaving their mark on history.
"The moonlight flooded that great, silent land. . . .The senses were too feeble to take it in, and every time one looked up to the sky, one felt unequal to it, as if one were sitting deaf under the waves of a great river of melody." -- Willa Cather
"The spell of the desert comes back to me, as it will always come. I see the veils, like purple smoke, in the canons, and I feel the silence. And it seems that again I must try to pierce both and to get at the strange wild life of the last American wilderness--wild still, almost, as it ever was." -- Zane Grey
"The Sangre de Cristo (blood of Christ) Mountains rose twelve thousand feet into the sky above Santa Fe. The town itself sat at nearly seven thousand feet above sea level, and was blessed with a clean, dry, high-altitude climate. Never too hot, never too cold, the salubrious air of old Santa Fe was scented with mountain pine and aspen, and canyon sage and cedar."
"The word was getting out: In New Mexico, a new society based on art and creativity was flourishing within and alongside some of the oldest and most picturesque indigenous communities found in North America."
"I found that the sunshine in New Mexico could do almost anything with one: make one well if one felt ill, or change a dark mood and lighten it. It entered into one's deepest places and melted the thick, slow densities. It made one feel good. That is, alive." -- Mabel Dodge Luhan
"I want to go right back into that canyon and be mauled by its big brutality, though all my bruises are not gone yet. It's a country that drives you crazy with delight, and that's all there is to it. I can't say anything more intelligible about it." -- Willa Cather
"It was August and high summer, and the sky over Pedernal was intensely blue. The road led O'Keeffe across the hot, dry landscape of red-gold sandlands and deeply carved arroyos to a cluster of adobe buildings beneath the sheer walls of the luminous cliffs. 'Perfectly mad-looking country--hills and cliffs and washes too crazy to imagine all thrown up into the air by God and let tumble where they would.'"
"The moonlight flooded that great, silent land. . . .The senses were too feeble to take it in, and every time one looked up to the sky, one felt unequal to it, as if one were sitting deaf under the waves of a great river of melody." -- Willa Cather
"The spell of the desert comes back to me, as it will always come. I see the veils, like purple smoke, in the canons, and I feel the silence. And it seems that again I must try to pierce both and to get at the strange wild life of the last American wilderness--wild still, almost, as it ever was." -- Zane Grey
"The Sangre de Cristo (blood of Christ) Mountains rose twelve thousand feet into the sky above Santa Fe. The town itself sat at nearly seven thousand feet above sea level, and was blessed with a clean, dry, high-altitude climate. Never too hot, never too cold, the salubrious air of old Santa Fe was scented with mountain pine and aspen, and canyon sage and cedar."
"The word was getting out: In New Mexico, a new society based on art and creativity was flourishing within and alongside some of the oldest and most picturesque indigenous communities found in North America."
"I found that the sunshine in New Mexico could do almost anything with one: make one well if one felt ill, or change a dark mood and lighten it. It entered into one's deepest places and melted the thick, slow densities. It made one feel good. That is, alive." -- Mabel Dodge Luhan
"I want to go right back into that canyon and be mauled by its big brutality, though all my bruises are not gone yet. It's a country that drives you crazy with delight, and that's all there is to it. I can't say anything more intelligible about it." -- Willa Cather
"It was August and high summer, and the sky over Pedernal was intensely blue. The road led O'Keeffe across the hot, dry landscape of red-gold sandlands and deeply carved arroyos to a cluster of adobe buildings beneath the sheer walls of the luminous cliffs. 'Perfectly mad-looking country--hills and cliffs and washes too crazy to imagine all thrown up into the air by God and let tumble where they would.'"
July 12, 2015
I love a writer who teases out the connections from a tangle of sources, a writer whose fascination with her subject shows, who recognizes a deeper truth. And I have found a writer who does all that and then some: Lesley Poling-Kempes. Her most recent work is Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest.
The true stories of the remarkable women profiled here are powerfully compelling. Beginning her narrative in 1903, a time when most women's choices were distinctly narrow, Poling-Kempes describes a group of females who took risks, made leaps, and created lives of authenticity and grace. Giving up sidesaddles for riding astride in practical khakis, they allowed themselves to belong to the lands and people of a new place, a raw frontier. When roads were few and either dusty or muddy, "Their journeys took them to Monument Valley and Rainbow Bridge, into Canyon de Chelly and across the high mesas of the Hopi, down through the Grand Canyon and over the red desert of the Four Corners, to the pueblos along the Rio Grande and the Hispanic villages in the mountains between Santa Fe and Taos." They left behind easy comfort, family and friends, and social expectations. They pushed against the norms to follow what called them and, in the process, forged larger models of what a woman's life could be. These women opened fresh territory for all of us, and played a part in shaping American culture.
Yet they were nearly forgotten. When Poling-Kempes went looking for more information about one particular woman, Carol Bishop Stanley, who founded the famed Ghost Ranch near Abiquiu, New Mexico, there was little to nothing written about her in histories of the place. Eventually, Poling-Kempes found some oral histories and "a handful of written accounts and letters," which sent her tracking not just Stanley but over a dozen other fascinating women whose stories were twined together through friendships and landscapes. Her research has been productive.
• Natalie Curtis Burlin, for instance, was one of Carol Stanley's friends. A gifted musician, she became a pioneer in preserving the sacred songs and stories of Native Americans. She had the respectful ear of President Theodore Roosevelt and brought a new awareness of Native culture to policy makers and to Eastern Americans.
•A Boston Brahmin, Mary Cabot Wheelwright became a part-time resident and a full-time supporter of Santa Fe after visiting Carol Stanley. Eventually, she founded the renowned Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian there.
• Alice Ellen Klauber was a painter and a wealthy woman from San Diego. Her travels and adventures in Arizona and New Mexico, often arranged by Natalie Curtis Burlin, were great encounters with the majesty of the land and the native people, and ever after shaped her work and interests. Klauber painted the Southwest, and in San Diego, she founded and supported many art events and organizations, and brought great artworks to the city.
• Elsie Clews Parsons was a sociologist and anthropologist, the daughter of a wealthy New York banker, who found herself in studying the tribes of the Southwest and Mexico. Her book, Pueblo Indian Religion, is considered a classic, and she was the first woman to become president of the American Anthropological Association.
Poling-Kempes brings these women, and more, to life by giving thought to their individual realities while presenting them in the context of their time and their personal connections. Carefully drawing out an impressive web of relationships, she illustrates the power of this female network, and the support the women offered each other. She also gives a glimpse of the hardships they weathered just to experience the harsh beauty of the still-wild land, as well as the life storms they endured in order to make their lives their own. Even now, there are plenty of women, myself included, who can recognize those struggles.
Weaving individual threads into a larger picture, Poling-Kempes has created a narrative tapestry relevant to readers everywhere. As she says, it is the story of "New Women stepping bravely into the New World, of Anglo America waking up to Native America, of inconspicuous success and ambitious failure." That story includes plenty of drama, politics, romance, and heartbreak, too.
As it happens, Poling-Kempes is writing about women's impact on a landscape that I have explored with heart, from Santa Fe to San Diego and points in between. My experiences and interests overlapped with these Southwestern foremothers, and kept me fully engaged. This phenomenon was likely at work for the author, as well, who has lived for many years in the very places that Carol Bishop Stanley loved. Yet even readers who have never been west of the Mississippi will find themselves fascinated by these Ladies of the Canyons, who liberated themselves into lives of passion and purpose. In doing that, they loosened bonds for all of us.
by Susan Schoch
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
The true stories of the remarkable women profiled here are powerfully compelling. Beginning her narrative in 1903, a time when most women's choices were distinctly narrow, Poling-Kempes describes a group of females who took risks, made leaps, and created lives of authenticity and grace. Giving up sidesaddles for riding astride in practical khakis, they allowed themselves to belong to the lands and people of a new place, a raw frontier. When roads were few and either dusty or muddy, "Their journeys took them to Monument Valley and Rainbow Bridge, into Canyon de Chelly and across the high mesas of the Hopi, down through the Grand Canyon and over the red desert of the Four Corners, to the pueblos along the Rio Grande and the Hispanic villages in the mountains between Santa Fe and Taos." They left behind easy comfort, family and friends, and social expectations. They pushed against the norms to follow what called them and, in the process, forged larger models of what a woman's life could be. These women opened fresh territory for all of us, and played a part in shaping American culture.
Yet they were nearly forgotten. When Poling-Kempes went looking for more information about one particular woman, Carol Bishop Stanley, who founded the famed Ghost Ranch near Abiquiu, New Mexico, there was little to nothing written about her in histories of the place. Eventually, Poling-Kempes found some oral histories and "a handful of written accounts and letters," which sent her tracking not just Stanley but over a dozen other fascinating women whose stories were twined together through friendships and landscapes. Her research has been productive.
• Natalie Curtis Burlin, for instance, was one of Carol Stanley's friends. A gifted musician, she became a pioneer in preserving the sacred songs and stories of Native Americans. She had the respectful ear of President Theodore Roosevelt and brought a new awareness of Native culture to policy makers and to Eastern Americans.
•A Boston Brahmin, Mary Cabot Wheelwright became a part-time resident and a full-time supporter of Santa Fe after visiting Carol Stanley. Eventually, she founded the renowned Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian there.
• Alice Ellen Klauber was a painter and a wealthy woman from San Diego. Her travels and adventures in Arizona and New Mexico, often arranged by Natalie Curtis Burlin, were great encounters with the majesty of the land and the native people, and ever after shaped her work and interests. Klauber painted the Southwest, and in San Diego, she founded and supported many art events and organizations, and brought great artworks to the city.
• Elsie Clews Parsons was a sociologist and anthropologist, the daughter of a wealthy New York banker, who found herself in studying the tribes of the Southwest and Mexico. Her book, Pueblo Indian Religion, is considered a classic, and she was the first woman to become president of the American Anthropological Association.
Poling-Kempes brings these women, and more, to life by giving thought to their individual realities while presenting them in the context of their time and their personal connections. Carefully drawing out an impressive web of relationships, she illustrates the power of this female network, and the support the women offered each other. She also gives a glimpse of the hardships they weathered just to experience the harsh beauty of the still-wild land, as well as the life storms they endured in order to make their lives their own. Even now, there are plenty of women, myself included, who can recognize those struggles.
Weaving individual threads into a larger picture, Poling-Kempes has created a narrative tapestry relevant to readers everywhere. As she says, it is the story of "New Women stepping bravely into the New World, of Anglo America waking up to Native America, of inconspicuous success and ambitious failure." That story includes plenty of drama, politics, romance, and heartbreak, too.
As it happens, Poling-Kempes is writing about women's impact on a landscape that I have explored with heart, from Santa Fe to San Diego and points in between. My experiences and interests overlapped with these Southwestern foremothers, and kept me fully engaged. This phenomenon was likely at work for the author, as well, who has lived for many years in the very places that Carol Bishop Stanley loved. Yet even readers who have never been west of the Mississippi will find themselves fascinated by these Ladies of the Canyons, who liberated themselves into lives of passion and purpose. In doing that, they loosened bonds for all of us.
by Susan Schoch
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
June 10, 2016
I didn't expect to love this book as much as I do. I feel like the Title isn't as descriptive as it could be. This is about so much more than what 'adventuring in the southwest' sugests! Poling-Kempes did a fantastic job with taking what seems like an unbelievable amount of source material (all those diaries alone!) and crafting a fascinating story of the overlapping lives of intelligent, passionate, philanthropic, late-to-or-didn't marry "New Women" who threw off the stuffy social norms of their elite (mostly) eastern upbringings and truly threw themselves into the New Mexican desert life and helped build Santa Fe & New Mexico into what it was/is. I am fascinated by the artistic/anthropologic social/cultural overlap in this era of Santa Fe, and I was so happy to read about these individuals and groups who were passionately fighting for Native American rights & Cultural Preservation, instead of against it. And I'm just seriously impressed by how lax the gender roles/expectations were in this area/time and just how much freedom (wealthy) women were able to experience there.
May 23, 2019
"Ladies of the Canyons" is one of those books that seems to have been written just for me. I read everything I can get my hands on about the history of the American Southwest. I love the landscape, find the history fascinating, and wrote my dissertation on Chaco Canyon (I have a vested interest, so to speak). The Southwest is a truly magical place and they don't call New Mexico the Land of Enchantment for nothing. In addition, I'm always eager to read about the live of women from the 19th and early 20th centuries. So at first glance, this is a dream book for me. Unfortunately, it does not live up to its promise.
My problem with this book is in the details. Specifically, which details are included and which are not. The book weaves together the stories of several women who each came west for various reasons, discovered the beauty and freedom of the Four Corners region, and spent much of their lives there. These are women of privilege, born into wealth and high society, whose circumstances (yes, even those who were down on their luck) gave them the opportunity to remake their lives in the west. The early chapters, which focused primarily on Natalie Curtis, were quite interesting and filled with wonderful detail about the landscape and Ms. Curtis' explorations. Unfortunately, once the author begins to bring in other women, the narrative devolves into a great deal of name-dropping, becoming mired in lists of people, places, and dates. Yes, there is a lot of information here about these women and who they interacted with, but where is the majesty of the open desert? Where are their own words about the beauty and mystique that kept drawing them back to New Mexico? Such moments are few and far between. Instead, we get paragraph-long lists of artists and writers, detailed itineraries for wealthy visitors to dude ranches, and meaningless accounts of the ranch hands who worked for women owners.
I truly wanted to love this book because it has so many elements I love, but in the end, it became a chore to read through yet another list of the movers and shakers of early 20th century Santa Fe. I wanted the author to put me in Santa Fe at that moment, make me see it and smell it and hear it. I wanted to feel the Southwest rather than be told about it.
My problem with this book is in the details. Specifically, which details are included and which are not. The book weaves together the stories of several women who each came west for various reasons, discovered the beauty and freedom of the Four Corners region, and spent much of their lives there. These are women of privilege, born into wealth and high society, whose circumstances (yes, even those who were down on their luck) gave them the opportunity to remake their lives in the west. The early chapters, which focused primarily on Natalie Curtis, were quite interesting and filled with wonderful detail about the landscape and Ms. Curtis' explorations. Unfortunately, once the author begins to bring in other women, the narrative devolves into a great deal of name-dropping, becoming mired in lists of people, places, and dates. Yes, there is a lot of information here about these women and who they interacted with, but where is the majesty of the open desert? Where are their own words about the beauty and mystique that kept drawing them back to New Mexico? Such moments are few and far between. Instead, we get paragraph-long lists of artists and writers, detailed itineraries for wealthy visitors to dude ranches, and meaningless accounts of the ranch hands who worked for women owners.
I truly wanted to love this book because it has so many elements I love, but in the end, it became a chore to read through yet another list of the movers and shakers of early 20th century Santa Fe. I wanted the author to put me in Santa Fe at that moment, make me see it and smell it and hear it. I wanted to feel the Southwest rather than be told about it.
July 1, 2019
There is much about this book that is very interesting. Especially, I found the stories of Natalie Curtis and Carol Bishop Stanley fascinating. They challenged the roles of women of their time, but they also challenged how we interact with native peoples and set the path for relating to the Indian peoples of the southwest. However, the book is not well written, and it often reads like a masters’ thesis or anthropological report. The author did amazing amount of research and I give her much credit, however, it often seemed that she had to include everything she found. There are too many lists of people who might have attended an event, including names of those who might NOT have attended. I think the author did not have a clear mission for the book. I kept thinking – WHERE was the editor! And then, I was surprised (actually shocked) that this was not self-published but put out by the University of Arizona Press.
I wish the author had focused on just three or maybe four women and told their stories. All the extra lists and who knew whom (author does not seem to acknowledge the word whom) are detractions and make the book hard to read and distract from and even denigrate the roles of the amazing early women of the southwest.
I wish the author had focused on just three or maybe four women and told their stories. All the extra lists and who knew whom (author does not seem to acknowledge the word whom) are detractions and make the book hard to read and distract from and even denigrate the roles of the amazing early women of the southwest.
February 24, 2016
We're familiar with "Go West, young man, go West" [John Babsone Lane Soule], but this book is about the young women that went West in order to escape cultural strictures at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The American Southwest became the place where they could become women who started art movements, documented native American song and dance, and lived on their own terms. New Mexico and California were the settings and since I've lived in so many of the places mentioned, I especially enjoyed this well written history. [Thanks, Carolyn!]
p.213: "I found out that the sunshine in New Mexico could do almost anything with one: make one well if one felt ill, or change a dark mood and lighten it. It entered into one's deepest places and melted the thick, slow densities. I made one feel good. That is, alive." --Mabel Dodge Luhan
p.253: "Carol commissioned Gustave Baumann, a German-born painter and printmaker who had joined the Santa Fe art colony in 1918...to design woodcuts for the San Gabriel Ranch pamphlet."
p.213: "I found out that the sunshine in New Mexico could do almost anything with one: make one well if one felt ill, or change a dark mood and lighten it. It entered into one's deepest places and melted the thick, slow densities. I made one feel good. That is, alive." --Mabel Dodge Luhan
p.253: "Carol commissioned Gustave Baumann, a German-born painter and printmaker who had joined the Santa Fe art colony in 1918...to design woodcuts for the San Gabriel Ranch pamphlet."
October 21, 2017
The ladies from the PageTurners book club LOVE this book and recommend it regularly, so we finally read it for the group. I love NM history and stories of the badass women who participated in this rough country during the early 1900s. The author made non-fiction palatable and even compelling, although I don't know exactly HOW. I read this every night before sleeping and it often keep me awake for a full chapter, something Blood and Thunder definitely did not, as a comparison. Too many names of people I didn't know or remember context or care about were thrown in, but other names were recognizable from location in SF and the area -- La Farge, like the library in SF, and the Pajarito Plateau was a common place to visit. Would have loved a map to place some of the locations more easily. Old photos were great, too, and since this wasn't on audio or ebook, I actually bought the book from Bandelier book store last spring.
August 6, 2021
A friend recommended I read this and I'm so glad I did. Even though it did take me quite a while to read. (Non-fiction almost always takes me a long time.) I learned so much: not only about the biographies of this group of women, but about early 20th-century life in New Mexico in general. At least, from the point of view of independent, often wealthy, strong-willed women who had the means to escape the repression of the East Coast and re-invent themselves out West.
The book follows the lives of Natalie Curtis Burlin, Alice Klauber, Mary Cabot Wheelwright, and Carol Bishop Stanley, who were friends with each other or at least acquaintances, and who found that once they learned to ride astride a horse instead of sidesaddle, there was no going back. Carol Bishop Stanley’s story in particular engrossed me more and more as the book continued, which I felt was also true for the author. It was Carol who really founded Ghost Ranch, although tragically she was not able to hang on to it for long. George O’Keeffe (who is only a side character here) comes across as an entitled johnny-come-lately, which is a perspective on her I hadn’t heard before.
This book is exhaustively researched and excellently written. Highly recommended for those who love the Southwest, history, and bad-ass women.
The book follows the lives of Natalie Curtis Burlin, Alice Klauber, Mary Cabot Wheelwright, and Carol Bishop Stanley, who were friends with each other or at least acquaintances, and who found that once they learned to ride astride a horse instead of sidesaddle, there was no going back. Carol Bishop Stanley’s story in particular engrossed me more and more as the book continued, which I felt was also true for the author. It was Carol who really founded Ghost Ranch, although tragically she was not able to hang on to it for long. George O’Keeffe (who is only a side character here) comes across as an entitled johnny-come-lately, which is a perspective on her I hadn’t heard before.
This book is exhaustively researched and excellently written. Highly recommended for those who love the Southwest, history, and bad-ass women.
February 20, 2020
Very interesting and well researched. What extraordinary women!
July 23, 2021
You simply can't miss this book if you go anywhere in Santa Fe or the surrounding area. It called out "buy me" every time I saw it. But, sadly, it wasn't anywhere near as good I was hoping - and a million miles from Poling-Kempes' wonderful book about the Harvey Girls. I had to skip the entire second half as the author got so bogged down in details that I lost the will to live. Who cares who was on which expedition, what they ate for breakfast and what they might have said if they'd only kept a diary. I wish the author had just told the story of Natalie Curtis who, like Edward Curtis (no relation), had a single minded purpose - he was obsessed with photographing native cultures, and she wanted to capture music and song. I think the author must have mentioned at least 100 other people and they might honestly have been interesting, but I just can't keep track of that many people in my head. There were snippets of broader context - Santa Fe becoming a mecca for artists, and the west opening up to tourists (even stuffy ones from the East Coast) but I needed more of that as that is fascinating and memorable. Where someone went for a drive one day, and the fact that a headache drove them to bed (I've got a headache too now by the way), was just too tedious so sadly this book will be put behind another in my bookcase. The black and white photos that dot these mundane passages are magnificent though.
October 24, 2016
Lesley Poling-Kempes has skillfully woven together the discoverable facts of the lives of four previously largely unsung heroines of our American Southwest: Carol Bishop Stanley, Natalie Curtis Burlin, Mary Cabot Wheelright, and Alice Ellen Klauber. Especially as a native of San Diego, I am very glad to know more about Alice Klauber, a founder of our own gem, the San Diego Museum of Art.
Because this is scholarly non-fiction, Poling-Kempes only hints at the pure romance and unending conflict in the lives lead by these adventurous ladies. Each, in her own way, became a curator for future generations to begin an understanding of the native peoples and the magnificent lands found in concentric circles out from magical Santa Fe, New Mexico.
After finishing the last page, I went online to find more to read about these remarkable women, and sadly found virtually nothing. I hope more will come, and perhaps even Poling-Kempes will use her in-depth knowledge to create some historical fiction that will help us further envision these lives of such vision.
Because this is scholarly non-fiction, Poling-Kempes only hints at the pure romance and unending conflict in the lives lead by these adventurous ladies. Each, in her own way, became a curator for future generations to begin an understanding of the native peoples and the magnificent lands found in concentric circles out from magical Santa Fe, New Mexico.
After finishing the last page, I went online to find more to read about these remarkable women, and sadly found virtually nothing. I hope more will come, and perhaps even Poling-Kempes will use her in-depth knowledge to create some historical fiction that will help us further envision these lives of such vision.
January 20, 2017
Fascinating!
Clearly I was born 75 years too late and into the wrong family! [although my birthday is Dec. 16th! :)]
I have always loved the areas described in this book, especially northern New Mexico, so it was very interesting to hear how the Ladies of the Canyons were instrumental in discovering the 'magic' of this enigmatic and beautiful place. Until reading this book one assumed Georgia O'Keeffe was the Leader of the Pack, but that is simply not the case.
The book is meticulously researched, although with some glaring errors, like the start year of WW11 [1939 not 1942]; Paris is called the City of LIGHT not LightS; and some grammatical errors also, but nonetheless, fascinating to see how the Ladies were eventually accepted by virtue of their accomplishments and not their birthright or standing in the Social Register.
This is the first book I've read by this author and would like to investigate some of her other writings.
Clearly I was born 75 years too late and into the wrong family! [although my birthday is Dec. 16th! :)]
I have always loved the areas described in this book, especially northern New Mexico, so it was very interesting to hear how the Ladies of the Canyons were instrumental in discovering the 'magic' of this enigmatic and beautiful place. Until reading this book one assumed Georgia O'Keeffe was the Leader of the Pack, but that is simply not the case.
The book is meticulously researched, although with some glaring errors, like the start year of WW11 [1939 not 1942]; Paris is called the City of LIGHT not LightS; and some grammatical errors also, but nonetheless, fascinating to see how the Ladies were eventually accepted by virtue of their accomplishments and not their birthright or standing in the Social Register.
This is the first book I've read by this author and would like to investigate some of her other writings.
June 21, 2020
The subject matter is fascinating, but the focus is disjointed.
This is not a story about a tightknit community of like-minded women, but rather, many converging stories about independent, determined, RICH women who pursued their desires for art, research, music, and the New Mexico desert experience.
What is disappointing in is that there is too much Information. The book would have have been more coherent with less listing of people and relationships, and more focused storytelling.
Still, a lot of research went into this and there are plenty of rare photos of people and landscapes.
Worth reading, but don't feel guilty if you skip over some of the underbrush.
This is not a story about a tightknit community of like-minded women, but rather, many converging stories about independent, determined, RICH women who pursued their desires for art, research, music, and the New Mexico desert experience.
What is disappointing in is that there is too much Information. The book would have have been more coherent with less listing of people and relationships, and more focused storytelling.
Still, a lot of research went into this and there are plenty of rare photos of people and landscapes.
Worth reading, but don't feel guilty if you skip over some of the underbrush.
July 21, 2017
3 stars for the amount of research that clearly went into this book and for highlighting the accomplishments of these women. BUT, this book felt too clunky for me with facts that most of the time did not flow naturally for me. It was hard to get into a narrative.
April 17, 2021
This was such an extraordinary book. I cannot even imagine the kind of serious research that must have been involved to quilt together a story like this. She must have read countless sources to uncover the story of how a half-dozen extraordinary women found their way to this part of the country to live independently and many with great style. Poling-Kemps says she began with one aim: to try and figure out how OKeefefe's Ghost ranch came into being and why the woman who gave it it's real start had all but disappeared from history. And trying to figure this out, the story encompassed several women who also lived near or around Ghost ranch and in Santa Fe (San Diego and Balboa Park is also a major place in the book).... My own interest was Mary Colter--the great architect, but I quickly realized this was not about Mary Colter but Mary Cabot...
The women were "educated, restless, and inquisitive!" Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright .... It also includes Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, and Willa Cather. Having just finished 109 East Palace--there was another amazing and plucky woman in that story. For the time period, all of these women were giants. They not only lived on their own terms, but they became significant actors in the preservation of culture.
This would make a great bookclub book because there is so much to love and talk about in its pages! I have her Harvey Girls, as well as two books she wrote about Abiquiu. Impressive writer!
The women were "educated, restless, and inquisitive!" Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright .... It also includes Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, and Willa Cather. Having just finished 109 East Palace--there was another amazing and plucky woman in that story. For the time period, all of these women were giants. They not only lived on their own terms, but they became significant actors in the preservation of culture.
This would make a great bookclub book because there is so much to love and talk about in its pages! I have her Harvey Girls, as well as two books she wrote about Abiquiu. Impressive writer!
April 14, 2021
My Interest
Women’s History Month and the unavailability of any of my requested audiobooks led me back to this book. I tried it once before, but at the wrong moment. This time I enjoyed it very much, in spite of a lackluster reader.
The Story
Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright left their very sheltered, upper-class New England homes and developed an art, anthropology, and musicology community in the then barely-known “city” of Santa Fe, New Mexico. At a time when Pancho Villa was taking on the tiny U.S. Army at the border (yes, THAT border), these ladies, one-by-one, found their way to the Southwest and to join forces with a few others already there to create salons, galleries, and museums, as well as lives for themselves.
“Part of an influential circle of women that included Louisa Wade Wetherill, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, and Willa Cather, these ladies imagined and created a new home territory, a new society, and a new identity for themselves and for the women who would follow them” (Amazon). Georgia O’Keeffe and Willa Cather were also part of the art and literary scene of Santa Fe at this time. Mr. and Mrs. D.H. Lawrence have a cameo in the story, too.
My Thoughts
Natalie Curtis, the “ethnomusicologist who transcribed the singing of hundreds of tribes for The Indians’ Book: Songs and Legends of the American Indians, first published in 1905,” (Levin a, 2015, para. 3) was the most interesting to me. Imagine “taking down” the “score” to Native American songs, charting the notes, giving the words written form, and then singing them in front of an audience! Wow.
Not that the other ladies were in any way “not interesting,” it is just that having taken music theory and nearly failing it, I was really amazed by this feat. Two of the other ladies, Mary Cabot Wheelwright (Yes of the Cabot and Lodge Cabots) and Alice Klauber both founded Museums that still exist today and the final member of the quartet, while Carol Stanley owned, ran, lost, rebuilt a few touristy ranches among other things. All were stalwart members of the arts scene in Santa Fe in the early to mid 20th Century.
The book was a little more academic in tone than desirable, but not dry or dull. The reader of the audiobook, however, made it sound dull. It was not the material. This was a fascinating look at 4 women who could almost be said to be the “woke” of their day for their disregard of social convention and embrace of the new. As curators of Native American culture and for their protection of Native American artifacts, we owe them a great debt. San Diego owes Alice Klauber a debt on its own, for she did much to develop the arts scene in that city as well.
My Verdict
4.0
Women’s History Month and the unavailability of any of my requested audiobooks led me back to this book. I tried it once before, but at the wrong moment. This time I enjoyed it very much, in spite of a lackluster reader.
The Story
Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright left their very sheltered, upper-class New England homes and developed an art, anthropology, and musicology community in the then barely-known “city” of Santa Fe, New Mexico. At a time when Pancho Villa was taking on the tiny U.S. Army at the border (yes, THAT border), these ladies, one-by-one, found their way to the Southwest and to join forces with a few others already there to create salons, galleries, and museums, as well as lives for themselves.
“Part of an influential circle of women that included Louisa Wade Wetherill, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, and Willa Cather, these ladies imagined and created a new home territory, a new society, and a new identity for themselves and for the women who would follow them” (Amazon). Georgia O’Keeffe and Willa Cather were also part of the art and literary scene of Santa Fe at this time. Mr. and Mrs. D.H. Lawrence have a cameo in the story, too.
My Thoughts
Natalie Curtis, the “ethnomusicologist who transcribed the singing of hundreds of tribes for The Indians’ Book: Songs and Legends of the American Indians, first published in 1905,” (Levin a, 2015, para. 3) was the most interesting to me. Imagine “taking down” the “score” to Native American songs, charting the notes, giving the words written form, and then singing them in front of an audience! Wow.
Not that the other ladies were in any way “not interesting,” it is just that having taken music theory and nearly failing it, I was really amazed by this feat. Two of the other ladies, Mary Cabot Wheelwright (Yes of the Cabot and Lodge Cabots) and Alice Klauber both founded Museums that still exist today and the final member of the quartet, while Carol Stanley owned, ran, lost, rebuilt a few touristy ranches among other things. All were stalwart members of the arts scene in Santa Fe in the early to mid 20th Century.
The book was a little more academic in tone than desirable, but not dry or dull. The reader of the audiobook, however, made it sound dull. It was not the material. This was a fascinating look at 4 women who could almost be said to be the “woke” of their day for their disregard of social convention and embrace of the new. As curators of Native American culture and for their protection of Native American artifacts, we owe them a great debt. San Diego owes Alice Klauber a debt on its own, for she did much to develop the arts scene in that city as well.
My Verdict
4.0
September 20, 2024
A fascinating book about some exceptional women from the turn of the 20th century who blazed trails in the American West for the sake of art and archaeology. Georgia O' Keefe is well known for her love of New Mexico, but there were a number of women who preceded her in such feelings and who made the Southwest their homes. At that time, they were truly roughing it--living quite differently from folks back east---and yet they found purpose and meaning in that hard life in what was then still a wilderness. These women created artist colonies; befriended Native Americans as they studied their music, art and culture; and sought and found solace in wide open spaces and stunning vistas. Natalie Curtis, Alice Klauber, Carol Stanley, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright all should be known for their contributions, and no less so than Georgia O'Keefe and Willa Cather. Worth the read.
April 13, 2022
As a lover of Santa Fe, NM, I found this history of strong women who helped shape the Four Corners narrative, a fascinating read. The author has done a great deal of research to piece together the story of their lives, their inter-connectedness, and their rich addition to the fabric of the American Southwest. Anyone who wants to get acquainted with the region needs to add this book to their priority reading list!
June 30, 2023
The Magic if the Southwest
This book is an interesting history of the "discovery" of the beauty and hardships of the American Southwest. It is also a tribute to the many women who found their freedom and their voices in a culture not bound by the East Coast constraints of culture and edicate.
This book is an interesting history of the "discovery" of the beauty and hardships of the American Southwest. It is also a tribute to the many women who found their freedom and their voices in a culture not bound by the East Coast constraints of culture and edicate.
April 29, 2018
This book definitely has its strengths, but it also gets tedious in places when there are lists of people who were famous in their day but are forgotten today unless you're a specialist in modern art. Still, the author does a good job of pulling out a lot of information about remarkable of women -- actually far more than the four who are most prominently profiled -- who helped to "settle" Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico and establish them as influential art colonies. In doing so,, these women not only found happiness and achievement for themselves, but they helped to preserve the music, dance, art and sacred myths of pueblo-area Indian tribes in the last generation before they would have been lost. This is an achievement that has paid benefits to all of us (most notably the Indians) for the last 100 years.
I mean, consider this scenario. A woman raised in NYC was a concert-caliber pianist. She has a nervous breakdown on the even of the performance that could have been her big chance. To recover, she goes to visit her brother in Los Angeles, who's living there and in New Mexico as a ranch hand for his health. She goes with him to the pueblo regions in Arizona and New Mexico, and she hits it off with Navajo leaders who teach her their songs. And because she's a trained concert pianist, she can actually transcribe them, which she does to acclaim in music circles around the world literally bringing that music out of its native land. And that's just one of the stories in this book, though the most remarkable.
The book does a wonderful job of evoking the beauty of the Southwest. Whether it's the author's quotes or her quotes from the women and their famous friends, we get a sense of the special light that infused the area, and how the stark, bright light played against the cliffs throughout the days and into memorable sunsets and evenings. We also get a sense of the strange (to Western ears) sounds of the music, but how they embraced it. Photos in the book give a window into the adobe homes and public buildings of the area and which helped to influence Western architecture ever since. All this is great.
What I could do with less of is the reminder that these were women who escaped from the social strictures of their privileged New York and Boston upbringings in the late 1800s to find themselves in the West. The point was made a couple of times, and that would have been sufficient. But it's made 30 times at least.
And I realize that the women deserve incredible admiration for what they did -- especially educating the rest of America about Navajo and other traditions, creating a vibrant and unique arts scene, and encouraging thousands of visitors (famous and not-so-famous) to visit a special area. I "get" all that. But these were privileged women who were able to do that because they had servants doing their washing, cleaning, hauling, and so on. And these women would just take off for 3 weeks into the pueblos (with paid guides), or catch a train back to Boston for a few months, or even a boat to Paris from New York occasionally. And yet the book doesn't credit these servants who had to stay behind while these women were trailblazers. A social historian would have a field day with that omission.
So if you're interested in women's history, this is a look at a very special set of accomplishments, most done by women. If you love the Southwest, this book will teach you about how parts of it were settled early in the 20th century. If you like art, you'll learn about the rise of American modern art and how Indians influenced it -- and the same with modern American music. But what you won't learn is that there were women and men who lived in drudgery so that these privileged few could explore, even though those privileged few occasionally felt a financial pinch, too.
I mean, consider this scenario. A woman raised in NYC was a concert-caliber pianist. She has a nervous breakdown on the even of the performance that could have been her big chance. To recover, she goes to visit her brother in Los Angeles, who's living there and in New Mexico as a ranch hand for his health. She goes with him to the pueblo regions in Arizona and New Mexico, and she hits it off with Navajo leaders who teach her their songs. And because she's a trained concert pianist, she can actually transcribe them, which she does to acclaim in music circles around the world literally bringing that music out of its native land. And that's just one of the stories in this book, though the most remarkable.
The book does a wonderful job of evoking the beauty of the Southwest. Whether it's the author's quotes or her quotes from the women and their famous friends, we get a sense of the special light that infused the area, and how the stark, bright light played against the cliffs throughout the days and into memorable sunsets and evenings. We also get a sense of the strange (to Western ears) sounds of the music, but how they embraced it. Photos in the book give a window into the adobe homes and public buildings of the area and which helped to influence Western architecture ever since. All this is great.
What I could do with less of is the reminder that these were women who escaped from the social strictures of their privileged New York and Boston upbringings in the late 1800s to find themselves in the West. The point was made a couple of times, and that would have been sufficient. But it's made 30 times at least.
And I realize that the women deserve incredible admiration for what they did -- especially educating the rest of America about Navajo and other traditions, creating a vibrant and unique arts scene, and encouraging thousands of visitors (famous and not-so-famous) to visit a special area. I "get" all that. But these were privileged women who were able to do that because they had servants doing their washing, cleaning, hauling, and so on. And these women would just take off for 3 weeks into the pueblos (with paid guides), or catch a train back to Boston for a few months, or even a boat to Paris from New York occasionally. And yet the book doesn't credit these servants who had to stay behind while these women were trailblazers. A social historian would have a field day with that omission.
So if you're interested in women's history, this is a look at a very special set of accomplishments, most done by women. If you love the Southwest, this book will teach you about how parts of it were settled early in the 20th century. If you like art, you'll learn about the rise of American modern art and how Indians influenced it -- and the same with modern American music. But what you won't learn is that there were women and men who lived in drudgery so that these privileged few could explore, even though those privileged few occasionally felt a financial pinch, too.
January 2, 2016
Having grown up in the Four Corners area, I know that this book is an authentic slice of history at that time, of the Southwest. It's also important as a slice of women's history and how the Southwest helped their striving for independence.
And Poling-Kempes' previous books indicate she knows various slices of the background behind this one.
There are a couple of minor errors in the book, though. The town north of Gallup is "Gamerco," not "GRamerco." Also, contra the author, Gamerco is NOT on the Big Rez, though it is close to it, and there's checkerboard land around the reservation.
Second, talking about Hosteen Klah and the "Great Spirit' is ... I guess, anachronistic is the best word. It's not a phrase regularly used by most Indian tribes, and certainly not by the Navajo, who don't really have such a concept. While Poling-Kempes shows sensitivity to how the BIA treated the Navajos a century ago, and talks about Hosteen Klah, albeit mainly from Mary Cabot Wheelwright's point of view, she doesn't delve a lot into Navajo religion. Also, it's arguable that "cacique" is itself a bit anachronistic; and in two ways. First, the Spanish used it for cultural/political leaders, not religious ones, hence it wouldn't apply to Klah. Second, in part due to limited success in controlling the Navajo, the Spanish applied the term to Puebloan leaders, normally. In fact, it's the first time I've heard it used of a Navajo.
So, this all said, the book lives up to what it is about, in terms of Anglo women in the Southwest. As for Navajo information, and perhaps to a small bit, Hopis, too, and definitely the degree of tension between the two tribes at that time, while not the focus of the book, is not quite what it could be, hence four stars not five.
And Poling-Kempes' previous books indicate she knows various slices of the background behind this one.
There are a couple of minor errors in the book, though. The town north of Gallup is "Gamerco," not "GRamerco." Also, contra the author, Gamerco is NOT on the Big Rez, though it is close to it, and there's checkerboard land around the reservation.
Second, talking about Hosteen Klah and the "Great Spirit' is ... I guess, anachronistic is the best word. It's not a phrase regularly used by most Indian tribes, and certainly not by the Navajo, who don't really have such a concept. While Poling-Kempes shows sensitivity to how the BIA treated the Navajos a century ago, and talks about Hosteen Klah, albeit mainly from Mary Cabot Wheelwright's point of view, she doesn't delve a lot into Navajo religion. Also, it's arguable that "cacique" is itself a bit anachronistic; and in two ways. First, the Spanish used it for cultural/political leaders, not religious ones, hence it wouldn't apply to Klah. Second, in part due to limited success in controlling the Navajo, the Spanish applied the term to Puebloan leaders, normally. In fact, it's the first time I've heard it used of a Navajo.
So, this all said, the book lives up to what it is about, in terms of Anglo women in the Southwest. As for Navajo information, and perhaps to a small bit, Hopis, too, and definitely the degree of tension between the two tribes at that time, while not the focus of the book, is not quite what it could be, hence four stars not five.
September 24, 2016
Long before artist Georgia O’Keefe and patron of the arts Mabel Dodge Luhan fell in love with New Mexico, other gutsy women from privileged families back east set out to explore “The Land of Enchantment” and claim it as their own. But their names were lost to history until recently.
Just as Natalie Curtis Burlin left the comfort of privilege in New York City to capture the songs of the Hopi, author Lesley Poling-Kempes left the comfort of sitting on her literary laurels to dive into the past and recreate the lives of some remarkable women who blazed new trails in the American Southwest. As I savored this engrossing and educational tale, it was almost like the author had gone back in time and accompanied her subjects as they bounced along in lumbering touring cars or trotted on horseback under the blazing sun, taking notes that would become The Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest.
Even now, a year after the release of this amazing book, I like to envision the author seated at a place of honor in a tiny casita a few blocks off the plaza in old Santa Fe. “The Ladies” are all gathered around Lesley when Natalie Curtis Burlin bustles in and offers her special guest a nice cup of tea. And with piano music drifting in through an open window, Carol Bishop Stanley (founder of Ghost Ranch), stands up and declares, “Dear Lesley, we knew you would come. It was just a matter of time.”
Highly recommended!
Kathleen M. Rodgers, author of the award-winning novel, Johnnie Come Lately
Just as Natalie Curtis Burlin left the comfort of privilege in New York City to capture the songs of the Hopi, author Lesley Poling-Kempes left the comfort of sitting on her literary laurels to dive into the past and recreate the lives of some remarkable women who blazed new trails in the American Southwest. As I savored this engrossing and educational tale, it was almost like the author had gone back in time and accompanied her subjects as they bounced along in lumbering touring cars or trotted on horseback under the blazing sun, taking notes that would become The Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest.
Even now, a year after the release of this amazing book, I like to envision the author seated at a place of honor in a tiny casita a few blocks off the plaza in old Santa Fe. “The Ladies” are all gathered around Lesley when Natalie Curtis Burlin bustles in and offers her special guest a nice cup of tea. And with piano music drifting in through an open window, Carol Bishop Stanley (founder of Ghost Ranch), stands up and declares, “Dear Lesley, we knew you would come. It was just a matter of time.”
Highly recommended!
Kathleen M. Rodgers, author of the award-winning novel, Johnnie Come Lately
November 27, 2017
Extraordinary they were, these intrepid women who came West to venture on their own, in the company of their friends and some openminded men who welcomed them. I was in New Mexico in August 2017, and I always like to bring back books, to further my knowledge of an area and extend the aura of a new place. I thought the book would be a dry recounting, but it is a well-written, interesting account of a period between the late 19th and mid 20th centuries in Northern New Mexico and Southern Utah and Eastern Arizona.This was the last great unexplored--by Americans of European descent--wild areas of the United States, with the exception of what was to become Hawaii and Alaska. Well-off, well-educated women from "good" families left the comfort of homes in the east and midwest to live their dreams. They were artists, musicians, scholars, writers, and dilettantes. They had money, class, and guts. They didn't fit the mold and didn't care, as difficult as it may have been. Eventhough, American society was more conservative then, these women managed to pull off a life of independence. Of course, there was no social media, no cell phones for constant contact and no airplanes for family members to whisk off and "rescue" their sisters and daughters. There is something to be said for slow communication, in the form of letters and telegrams. I highly recommend this book. By the way, the book only mentions Georgia O'Keefe at the very end. I appreciated this. O'Keefe, genius as she was, has dominated too much of the modern art history of the region.
November 12, 2015
I enjoyed this book and delighted in learning the history of these ladies and of the incredible lives they lived. It's also a story of place and a story of southwestern arts. In its way, it proves a historical truth about the ladies past, and current for whom the West and New Mexico, in particular, is a strong draw. Poling-Kempes is an excellent writer and I've enjoyed quite a few of her books. This book is well-written, obviously well-researched and a real page turner, a historical work that reads like fiction.
March 15, 2016
In the early 20th century, the Southwest welcomed a group of adventurous, strong, creative women. They found a fit in the landscape and cultures here that did not exist for them in the wealthy Eastern society most of them came from. Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley Bishop, Mary Cabot Wheelwright, and Alice Klauber get the most narrative in the book, but others floated in the same circles. Poling-Kempes did an amazing amount of research for this book and writes so well it feels like we're on these journeys of a hundred or so years ago.
May 7, 2018
I really enjoyed reading this book. It was interesting to learn about the arts colony of Sante Fe and how these women helped in creating it. I'm most fascinated by those who were able to write down the songs and stories of the native Americans.
Want to read
August 18, 2015I won this book via Goodreads First Reads Giveaway.
February 3, 2018
Thoroughly researched, well written and engaging the pure love of the desert; this book made me homesick and inspired.
May 28, 2019
I've always been enthralled by a poster I saw 20+ years ago with the famous photograph of Georgia O'Keeffe on a motorcycle taken by Maria Chabot, variously titled "Georgia O'Keeffe hitching a ride to Abiquiu," or as the poster proclaimed, "Women Who Rode Away." It resonated with my independence, my love of archaeology, and my fieldwork in the Southwest. Thus, when I happened across the book Ladies of the Canyons while browsing the shelves at my library, I knew I wanted to read it. The book is a history of a dozen or so wealthy Anglo women who all "rode away" to the American Southwest in the late 1800s and early 1900s, living adventurous lives away from "traditional" women's roles of their times.
If today we measure relationships to people by "Kevin Bacon Units," surely something must have also been in place for the inhabitants of this book. I was continually amazed by how many of them knew each other or were related to places I had been to (Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Los Alamos, Bandelier, Ghost Ranch). The book introduced me to people like Carol Stanley Pfaffle and Mary Cabot Wheelwright, as well as giving more background on people like Louisa Wetherill, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Natalie Curtis Burlin, whose names I was familiar with but did not know their full life details. The chapters are each loosely organized around one particular woman, but many others come and go like movie cameos. It seemed they were either friends or knew somebody who was business partners of somebody who rented a house from somebody until they are all interconnected like so many macrame strands. One character will fade out of view until suddenly popping up later as providing a letter of introduction to someone else. Georgia O'Keeffe is only tangentially mentioned in the book, but the book culminates in the complex roller-coaster backstory of the famed Ghost Ranch as a tourist destination.
The one drawback to the book is that it is primarily about rich and Anglo women. I found myself wondering what life was like for women who were Native American or Hispanic or poor Anglos? You only rarely get glimpses of women like these in the book. At one point a servant girl is mentioned to have smashed a Zuni olla, for example. The book never promised to tell the history of all women in the Southwest, however, only the dashingly notorious ones who were rebelling against the ideas about appropriate gender activities for rich white women held by their families conveniently far away in more populated areas of the United States. So, it lives up to its promise in that regard.
The book is a definite read if you are interested in learning about the nascent arts and ethnographic projects in the turn of the 20th century Southwest, are a fan of Willa Cather or Georgia O'Keeffe, love Southwestern National Parks, or are just sick of looking at one more spreadsheet and dream of running away from it all and exploring.
If today we measure relationships to people by "Kevin Bacon Units," surely something must have also been in place for the inhabitants of this book. I was continually amazed by how many of them knew each other or were related to places I had been to (Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Los Alamos, Bandelier, Ghost Ranch). The book introduced me to people like Carol Stanley Pfaffle and Mary Cabot Wheelwright, as well as giving more background on people like Louisa Wetherill, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Natalie Curtis Burlin, whose names I was familiar with but did not know their full life details. The chapters are each loosely organized around one particular woman, but many others come and go like movie cameos. It seemed they were either friends or knew somebody who was business partners of somebody who rented a house from somebody until they are all interconnected like so many macrame strands. One character will fade out of view until suddenly popping up later as providing a letter of introduction to someone else. Georgia O'Keeffe is only tangentially mentioned in the book, but the book culminates in the complex roller-coaster backstory of the famed Ghost Ranch as a tourist destination.
The one drawback to the book is that it is primarily about rich and Anglo women. I found myself wondering what life was like for women who were Native American or Hispanic or poor Anglos? You only rarely get glimpses of women like these in the book. At one point a servant girl is mentioned to have smashed a Zuni olla, for example. The book never promised to tell the history of all women in the Southwest, however, only the dashingly notorious ones who were rebelling against the ideas about appropriate gender activities for rich white women held by their families conveniently far away in more populated areas of the United States. So, it lives up to its promise in that regard.
The book is a definite read if you are interested in learning about the nascent arts and ethnographic projects in the turn of the 20th century Southwest, are a fan of Willa Cather or Georgia O'Keeffe, love Southwestern National Parks, or are just sick of looking at one more spreadsheet and dream of running away from it all and exploring.
Read
November 26, 2023Initially, I read this book for its focus on women of the west, and that remains true. My understanding of the Santa Fe arts community began with Georgia O'Keeffe's arrival, after Mabel Dodge Luhan had settled into Taos. Ladies of the Canyons showed how wrong I was.
Lesley Poling-Kempes writes of the women who came before -- intelligent,educated women who desired more than what the Victorian East offered her; women who wanted to contribute, who discovered a "self" created in the wide open land; who slept in bedrolls under the stars; who rode wearing khaki astride a Western saddle; who appreciated, learned, respected and preserved the native songs and chants, seeking permission from tribal leaders (and later publishing the collection); women who championed the native people, who railed against boarding schools, who successfully challenged those who proposed lelgislation providing that after 10 years of living on native land, a settler might claim a deed to the land.
The book reads like a daisy chain of friendships, singly and overlapping, that lead from New York City, Boston and San Diego to the desolate Southwest (which they found enriching, fulfilling, refreshing, and not desolate at all!) including Kayenta, the Petrified Forest, Chaco Canyon and its people: the Navajo, the Hopi, and on to New Mexico, friendships created by a desire to preserve native song coupled with an appreciation for modern art. The women left behind uncomfortable expectations and created fulfilling roles for themselves.
And yet, after completing/enjoying Poling-Kempes' writing and story-telling and having reflected, I find it important to acknowledge that both the Native Americans and the Spanish came before, and this is a single story: of educated white women "discovering" the Southwest -- contributing, yes; blazing a trial, yes -- and in doing so making a path for privileged travelers of the time to traipse. Their "discovery" intrudes, however gently and respectfully, on a land originally inhabited by others, and forcefully conquered.
Lesley Poling-Kempes has also written "The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West", "Ghost Ranch", "Canyon of Remembering" and other books about the American Southwest. -- and I may need to add them to my long list of books to read!
Lesley Poling-Kempes writes of the women who came before -- intelligent,educated women who desired more than what the Victorian East offered her; women who wanted to contribute, who discovered a "self" created in the wide open land; who slept in bedrolls under the stars; who rode wearing khaki astride a Western saddle; who appreciated, learned, respected and preserved the native songs and chants, seeking permission from tribal leaders (and later publishing the collection); women who championed the native people, who railed against boarding schools, who successfully challenged those who proposed lelgislation providing that after 10 years of living on native land, a settler might claim a deed to the land.
The book reads like a daisy chain of friendships, singly and overlapping, that lead from New York City, Boston and San Diego to the desolate Southwest (which they found enriching, fulfilling, refreshing, and not desolate at all!) including Kayenta, the Petrified Forest, Chaco Canyon and its people: the Navajo, the Hopi, and on to New Mexico, friendships created by a desire to preserve native song coupled with an appreciation for modern art. The women left behind uncomfortable expectations and created fulfilling roles for themselves.
And yet, after completing/enjoying Poling-Kempes' writing and story-telling and having reflected, I find it important to acknowledge that both the Native Americans and the Spanish came before, and this is a single story: of educated white women "discovering" the Southwest -- contributing, yes; blazing a trial, yes -- and in doing so making a path for privileged travelers of the time to traipse. Their "discovery" intrudes, however gently and respectfully, on a land originally inhabited by others, and forcefully conquered.
Lesley Poling-Kempes has also written "The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West", "Ghost Ranch", "Canyon of Remembering" and other books about the American Southwest. -- and I may need to add them to my long list of books to read!
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